


Forbidden Fruit

by black_lodge



Category: Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_lodge/pseuds/black_lodge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's something deeply wrong with a person who puts on a mask and beats people up every night. I know there's something wrong with <i>me.</i>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forbidden Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written c. 2009. Title taken from Nina Simone's song from the album of the same name, released 1961.

Dan had spent his formative years believing that Mr. Dreiberg, successful banker and businessman, was his natural father. It wasn't until a certain series of events and his mother's nostalgic remembrance of an encounter with the legendary Nite Owl cast suspicions on the subject of his paternity, and Dan felt compelled to dig deeper.

Dan had rooted out the truth on his own, on the strength of the two or three details that his mother had let slip, and through copious research into police records, arrest reports, and the like. He had contacted one Hollis Mason armed with an old photograph of his mother. Mason, impressed by his natural son's tenacity and skill at finding him, confirmed the truth at which Dan's mother had inadvertently hinted. Dan knew there had been a mugging - an attempted rape, Mason elaborated - and he had stopped it. Dan was oddly comforted knowing that it hadn't been a simple one-night-stand but an actual relationship.

"Your mother... she was a peach," said Mason, studying the old photograph as Dan sat across the table from him in the shop. "But she was too good for our kind of life. I knew she'd get hurt sooner or later. I wanted to protect her. So I ended it." He sighed, closing his eyes. "One of the hardest things I ever did, if you'll believe that, kid."

That was when Dan was seventeen. After that meeting, Dan became obsessed with the Minutemen. Surreal as the truth was - that his mother had had an affair with a masked avenger - he wanted to arrange that part of his history into his life somehow so it fit and made some sort of sense. So he began following their every move in the papers and started meeting Mason every week for a talk. He trained alongside Mason in the sparring sessions the group hosted at a local gym, and he learned fast. He acquired a taste for the life of a vigilante, and while Mason wouldn't let him get out in the thick of it right away, insisting his education take precedence over the night life, he contributed by designing weapons and gadgets for Mason's use.

He never worked up the nerve to call him "Dad," but he eventually managed to breach the adoring formality and call him by his first name. And when Hollis retired, he gladly handed over the persona for Dan's use, confident that Dan would do the name justice. It was always a running joke between them - some kids inherited money or real estate from their parents; Dan ended up with an entirely different kind of legacy, one that required tights.

1977\. By this time, tights were a thing of the past, and Dan had surprised even himself by the natural way he'd slipped into the role of Nite Owl Jr. He even had a partner now - Rorschach, who, despite being even more frightening and disturbed a character than many of those they fought, became Dan's best friend. He was also more used to the idea of Hollis being his father, though he still didn't call him 'Dad.' But with the Keene act forcing the masked vigilantes into early retirement, Dan felt stripped of purpose for the first time since he was a teenager. He felt even worse for Laurel Juspeczyk, who had never known any life other than that of the vigilante. She had taken on her mother's persona in the same way that Dan had taken his father's.

"It wasn't _my_ choice," said Laurie once when Dan had dared to make this comparison to her. "My mother makes me dress up in this thing and do this stuff every night."

Dan had laughed awkwardly and said she made it sound like some kind of weird abuse. Laurie had only looked him with a frightening stillness in her eyes.

"Maybe it is," she said, and walked out of the room.

Laurie was going out with Jon, the only one in the group with any actual super-powers, but Dan found that their paths continued to cross in the months following the Keene Act. When Rorschach showed up at Dan's with a bullet wound, demanding a quick patch-up before heading back out into the night, Laurie was the first to know. He invited her to Hollis' occasionally but she always turned him down, never keen on the idea of boozing and sighing over memories of the good ol' days. ("More like the bad ol' days," she had said, and Dan was glad she couldn't see him flush with regret over the phone.) 

But when she abruptly walked out on Jon one day, tired of being confined to the military base where Jon volunteered to be kept in order to do his research, it was at Dan's where she ended up. "Mom's in Florida," she said, lingering on the doorstep even though Dan had stepped aside for her to enter. "And Dad disowned me ages and ages ago. And I don't know anyone else, Dan. I don't know where else to go." So he put her up in the spare bedroom, though he knew it would be a torment, feeling her so nearby.

She wouldn't indulge in nostalgia except to condemn it. "That stuff's over and done with," she said if he tried to bring it up. "Masks robbed me of half my life. I never did anything on my own terms. Vigilantes are supposed to live this life of freedom but I never wanted anything more than a normal life with dates on Friday nights instead of sparring sessions and prom instead of those campy photo-ops. God, my mother didn't even let me go to prom, Dan; do you know how fucking much I hated her for that?"

When she really got going, there wasn't much more he could do but sit and listen to her. One Friday night after dinner at his place he was washing up their dishes in the sink and listening to her continue the conversation they'd been having over their lemon-baked tilapia.

"I don't even know what it's like, to go on a date with a real person," she was saying, gesturing with the dishtowel she held. "I can't make _small-talk._ What am I gonna say? _Hi, my name's Laurie. I spent my childhood training to become a superhero before the government made it illegal._ I have no friends. Masks are freaks. Present company excluded, Dan, I'm sorry. But they are. There's something deeply wrong with a person who puts on a mask and beats people up every night. I know there's something wrong with _me._ "

"There's nothing wrong with you," Dan had tried to tell her, but she leaned forward, dropping the towel on the counter and taking his cheek in her palm, and his heart nearly stopped.

"Dan, you see the best in everyone," she said, studying his eyes. And then she didn't say anything else, but she didn't pull away, though she usually seemed so skittish around him. She just stood there studying him, her hand perfectly still on his cheek, her other hand resting on the counter while she watched and waited. And when the silence and the tension and the unfurling of time became too much, Dan didn't pull away for once but leaned forward.

 

For the next couple of days, Dan was happier than he ever had been, happier than when he apprehended his first perp and dropped him, cuffed and unconscious, in front of the police station. That first kiss had been electric, but he'd stopped before it could go too far - as much as he wanted to, he didn't think it was the right time to have sex. Laurie didn't protest - though she had strained toward him and softened in his arms deliciously, she was surprisingly silent on the subject, and she followed as he led.

He wished they could stay in his flat for days, curled up around each other, kissing and talking, but Laurie wanted other things, and he wanted to give her everything she wanted. So he took her out to dinner on a 'real date,' to a place that served the best black and blue steaks in the city, and afterward they came home and he got out a bottle of wine and they sat on the couch, drinking and talking and listening to Nina Simone on the stereo. It almost happened then, right there on the couch, but he stopped her before she could unzip his trousers.

She was warm and pliant and hungry. "Let me, Dan, _let me,_ " she said, but he had taken her hands in his and kissed her fingertips, trying to take his mind off his aching groin.

"I want it to be perfect," he said, and she tried to pull her hands out of his grip. When she didn't succeed, she tried a different tact, leaning forward to press her mouth against his.

When she pulled back to examine his glassy eyes and dazed expression, she said, "Why not?"

His eyes flickered shut. It was easier if he couldn't see her. "You... you need me now. I've provided you with a place to stay and... I don't want either of us to ever think you did it out of gratitude. I want it to be on your own terms, when it happens."  
She wriggled against him. "This _is_ on my own terms," she began, but his hands went to her hair, twining through to hold her still.

"And I want you to be able to see how much I need _you,_ " he whispered.

That seemed to touch her. In any case, she kissed him once more on the forehead, disentangled herself from him, and went down the hall to her room. Dan breathed deep, shutting his eyes against the low lamplight, listening to Nina croon gently into the night.

***

The next night was his weekly date with Hollis. Dan invited Laurie to come, but she turned him down as usual - for some reason Dan was surprised, likely because he thought that since they were halfway "together" that she would be more interested in tagging along to his father's. But she wasn't, so he went alone, and she stayed home to get some reading done. She was working her way through his leather-bound set of the Great Books, "so I'll have something to talk with you about," she joked.

So Dan went alone, for once walking tall in his Private Dick trench coat and his banker's umbrella. Hollis noticed his elevated mood as soon as he walked in, and he cocked an eye at him with theatrical suspicion.

"That's a look I haven't seen in a while," said Hollis, holding the screen door open for Dan who entered, shaking the dew from his umbrella and pulling off his coat.

"Hollis, I'm a whole new man," said Dan, hanging the coat up on the hat tree. "I feel like - I can't even describe it."

Hollis snorted. "It's either you found Jesus or you finally met a girl as interested in ornithology as you," he said. "Am I right or am I right?"

Dan grinned as he sat down at Hollis' kitchen table. "I met a girl alright," he said. "Well, I don't know if 'met' is the right word."

Hollis stopped and glanced over his shoulder as he was peering in the fridge. "Easy there, kid. I'm still your old man and I'm not sure how much I wanna hear about your love life."

Dan laughed. "I didn't mean it like that," he said. "I mean, I already knew her - I've known her for a while. That's what I meant."

"Oh yeah? Who is it?"

He wasn't paying attention; he was manhandling a six pack out of the fridge and kicking shut the door with his foot and digging around in his pocket for a church key, and when Dan said "Laurie Juspeczyk," and when the bottles went crashing to the floor, sending glass and beer everywhere, Dan said "God _damn!"_ but Hollis didn't say anything, only stood there staring at the mess, hands fluttering like handkerchiefs at a train window.

"Here, let me help clean that up," said Dan, who had jumped to his feet. "Hollis? Hollis - are you alright?"

"I need to sit down," said Hollis vaguely, and Dan pulled out the nearest chair for him.

"Hey man, don't worry about it," said Dan, uncertain, crouching down to start picking up the larger pieces of glass. "It's only beer, it's not a problem. Look, I'll go down to the corner and buy - "

Hollis shook his head, once, sharply. "Dan, it's not that."

Dan stopped picking at the glass on the floor, tilting his head and furrowing his brow. "Hollis, what's the matter?"

"You haven't... slept with her, have you?"

Dan flushed. "What? Hollis - "

"I'm asking to tell me if you've _slept_ with her or not," said Hollis, his voice flat with grim determination.

"No! No - not yet. Hollis, I don't know why you - "

"She's your sister, Dan."

Dan lost his breath. He gasped like a fish, looking down to see the blood welling up in his hands where he'd involuntarily clenched the broken bottle glass. He dropped the shards and the sound they made as they hit the floor never reached his ears. He focused all his attention on the blood brimming in his palm, one great gash cutting through the lines in his hand.

"Oh," he said faintly. "Ah." And he felt his legs buckling underneath him.

Hollis stood and came to him, gripping Dan's arm as he slid to the floor amid the broken glass and spilled beer. "Dan. Dan -- "

Dan clunked his head back against the low cabinet by the fridge. "Don't talk to me for a minute." He clenched his eyes shut, his fingers encircling the wrist of his injured hand. He tried to will his mind to blankness but all he could picture was Laurie, her bright lithe body bare beneath his, writhing and - 

When he opened his eyes, Hollis was crouched in front of him, glass cracking beneath his shoes, his eyes wide and earnest and anxious and sad, so sad. Dan wanted to spit in his face, sucker-punch him - something, anything to repay the blow Hollis had just dealt him.

But all he did was get slowly to his feet and go to the door, painfully pulling on his coat and finding his umbrella as Hollis talked at him. Dan barely heard the screen door slam behind him as he trudged back out onto the street.

How he made it home he wasn't sure, but the next thing he knew he was stepping into the sitting room and Laurie was looking up ( _"She's your sister, Dan"_ ) at him saying "Dan? Oh my God, Dan, what happened?!" And she threw the book aside and came to him, taking his hand in hers - the coat was ruined, Dan noticed distantly - making injured little noises over the state of his palm before taking him into the bathroom to clean him up.

"What happened? What happened?" she asked repeatedly as she washed away the blood - there was so much of it, and it continued to flow as she rinsed it away. Dan could barely speak, and couldn't say anything about what had brought him to this point.

"It's nothing," was all he could manage. And he sat on the lid of the toilet and let her clean his hand.

She bandaged him up like a pro and, because he was still halfway catatonic, knelt before him and began to undress him. "Need to get you out of these bloody clothes," she said, murmuring more to herself than to Dan because she couldn't get any more of a response out of him. "Need to get you warmed up. God, Dan, you're freezing. I think you're in shock."

Her hands on his bare chest snapped him out of it. "I'm fine!" he said in a strangled voice, rearing back away from her.

"You are _not_ fine," said Laurie, but her temper didn't flare; she was calm and devastatingly concerned, and Dan could hardly stand it, seeing her kneeling at his feet, her hands on his knees, a streak of his blood on her cheek. _She's your sister, Dan... your sister, your sister, my sister...._ And he could see her leaning forward, unzipping him, taking hold of him, her rich dark hair heavy on his thighs, her slender fingers on his hips, and her mouth, God, oh Jesus Christ - 

"Dan?" And there she was, still concerned, still sweet as summer love.

And suddenly, there he was, too. He leaned forward, taking her face in his hands, and he kissed her like it was the last time. Her body was startled, then yielding; she curled her arms around his neck, and he tried not to crush her. He stood and she followed, and when they broke apart he could see the brightness and glory in her eyes.

He kissed her cheek, then swiped his tongue over the stroke of blood there, and she shivered in his arms. And he spoke.

"Laurie?"

She hummed, a warm and inquisitive sound.

"Do you love me?"

She pulled back to look him in the eye. She looked for a long time, what seemed like too long to Dan, whose existence had boiled down to a few covert moments, the desire for a lifetime more, or at least another night in innocence.

"Dan, you're...."

And he thought she would say something banal - _Dan, you're a great guy. Dan, you're a dear. Dan, you're swell, but_ love?

"You're everything to me now," was what she actually said, and Dan would have given anything to have acted when he had the chance instead of indulging in torturous denial for the sake of some ridiculous _ideal._

Her voice was far-away. "Let's go to bed," she said, and he followed her out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into his bedroom. There she shut the curtains and finished undressing him, but instead of laying him down then and there and ending him, she helped him into a pair of gray sweats and his old Harvard t-shirt and even a pair of socks from the top drawer of his dresser. She took off his glasses, wiped them clean on her frock, and set them on the bedside table. Then she drew back the comforter and helped him slide in, pulling it back up over him when he was settled.

And he thought she would leave him there, but then she began to strip as well, taking off the frock first, then slipping out of her slacks, and then unbuttoning her blouse and leaving it on the trunk at the end of the bed. Finally she shut off the light and crawled into bed beside him, discreetly unhooking her bra and dropping it over the side of the bed before tugging the comforter up over her shoulders and snuggling up next to him.

How he slept, he had no idea. Her body was warm and small, her soft breasts pressed against his ribs, her hair sweet and her hands clever at finding a neat place to tuck. But his mind hurt like a toothache, an ache too big to ignore, and her presence became a comfort instead of a torment.

His dreams were fragrant with her.

***

He woke with a groan in a wave of pleasure so intense that for a moment he could think of nothing else but prolonging it. His hands clenched and his entire body shuddered, and his moan tapered off into a sob of relief and incomprehensible anguish.

He opened his eyes. Everything was dark, until his eyes adjusted and he saw Laurie's face hanging over him, a soft blur in the nakedness of his eyes.

"You were dreaming," she whispered. "You were twisting and crying out and so I...."

_No._

"I... I hope you..."

_"She's your sister, Dan."_

"Dan?"

_Sister._

He reached up and pulled her down, kissing her, turning her over, his elbows bracketing her body, his hands gripping at her probably too tightly. Her reed-slender body arched up against his and he sobbed into her mouth, pressing down on her with his full weight so she couldn't writhe and wriggle and drive him so mad. She gasped and struggled to breathe and cried out as his lips found the delicate sensitive whorls of her ear.

"Hollis - " he said, and she stopped squirming for a moment - "he told me...."

His stomach lurched. He had to say it. He couldn't possibly say it. He should've said it when he stepped into the flat last night. But it was too late now.

He took her breast into his hand, thumbed her nipple until it was rosy and gumdrop-hard. Her hands sought for purchase on his back, and his mouth pressed against her ear, tongue tracing the curves there, and he murmured in a voice so low it was little more than breath and hum - "You're my sister."

For the briefest moment she stiffened, shivered. Then her face was buried in his shoulder and her nails were sharp in his back. Her voice was muffled against his flesh. He pulled back, asking her to repeat herself. She met his eyes and he waited for the sentence.

"I know," she whispered.

***

"What do you mean, you know?"

Dan sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, and she sat with her knees pulled up to her chest against the headboard. Dan's heart was pounding and he wondered if he was old enough to have a heart attack. Breathing was painful. He didn't want to breathe anymore.

"I found out right... right before I left Jon. He helped me to see it. He didn't help me to see this."

Dan unconsciously clutched the soft fabric of his t-shirt over his heart. "What exactly is 'this'?"

She looked down into her hands, avoiding his gaze for the first time. "I wanted you, Dan. I wanted you for a long time. It sounds stupid but I... I always liked you."

Dan laughed, but it sounded more like a death rattle. "Never would've guessed."

She gave him a look full of hurt. "I _told_ you there was something wrong with me," she said, and then her eyes widened. "Oh god, I didn't mean it to sound like that. I'm sorry. What I meant was... even after I learned that Hollis was my father, I still...."

Dan began to turn away, feeling nauseous, but she leaned forward and touched the blanket in front of him, obviously aware of what might happen if she laid her hand on him again.

"If it makes you feel any better, I wanted to tell you," she said. "And please, before you judge me - realize how difficult it was for you when _you_ learned."

"I learned somewhat after the fact," said Dan grimly.

"But you still went to bed with me," she said, and he was too aware that beneath the sheet she'd wrapped around her, she was almost completely naked.

"Yes, but it wasn't - it wasn't like _that,_ " he began, but she shook her head.

"What else was it like?" she said, and he was hard-pressed to answer that. "Look." And she shuffled forward on her knees, still keeping the sheet demurely around her chest. "I'm crazy about you. I think you still love me, too. What else is there besides that?"

"The family tree," said Dan without a shred of irony.

"Damn it, Dan!" She slapped her hand against the mattress, but the gesture wasn't half as emphatic as she wanted it to be. "Would you get over your self-loathing for once and look at me?"

He looked at her. His heart thudded painfully in his throat, and his stomach leapt and turned beneath his ribs, but a slow warmth flickered in his groin and he broke out in a cold sweat.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "For... taking advantage of you."

Dan bit his lip. "But?"

Laurie shuffled forward again so her knees were touching his. She lifted a hand and pressed it to his beating heart.

"But nothing."

Dan took a breath.

"People have done worse things for love," she said, and it was true like a brick through a window.

For a minute they sat there like that, her hand on his heart, the other clutching the sheet to her breast. The seconds ticked by. Dan felt his heartbeat change tempo, felt his breathing ease, felt the prickle of drying sweat on the back of his neck. That warmth in his groin began to slowly spread through the rest of him, and when her hand began to slide down his chest, his nerve endings caught fire.

She let the sheet drop and he all but lunged forward to take her in his mouth. There was nothing comical about it, and no adequate words to describe it. It felt like falling off a cliff. It felt like drowning. It felt like the Big Bang all over again, and the end of the universe all rolled into one. When she curled around him, he was home. The way she arched into him and turned her head into the pillow, her teeth sinking into her lower lip, her eyes tight shut as she strained against it - feeling her shudder and break apart beneath him and hearing her gasp his name - it all felt like the sole reason for his existence. 

And when he finally came, he was falling, drowning, exploding, collapsing, all at the same time, and with his eyes wide open, struggling for air - and she came up to meet him, her hands gripping his shoulders, grounding him, because the reality of it, though imperfect, though terrifying, was everything.

***

They considered running away together - just packing up and leaving.

They decided against it, for various reasons. They didn't know what else they could do - but for now they would stay put, take care of each other, and let the answer come to them as it would.

Laurie was optimistic. "If the queers can have it their way, then we can have it ours," she said.

Dan was less optimistic, but he was infatuated. More than infatuated. And he was busy justifying their actions, getting better at it every day. “The human mind is a beautiful thing,” he told her one day over Chinese takeout. “If one tries hard enough, one can convince oneself of anything.”

“Such as that these delicious eggrolls won’t go directly to our hips?” said Laurie, poking at him with her chopsticks, and he laughed and told her he knew a good way to work off some calories.

Dan couldn’t bring himself to visit Hollis again. He stayed as far away from the old crowd as possible. The only person he could never avoid was Rorschach, who maintained his old unpleasant habit of showing up at the most unexpected time. But he became part of the strange rhythm of their life, appearing on their doorstep for a quick stitch-up or news of some new conspiracy. Dan was rarely tempted. He had Laurie, and Laurie was his everything.

And when it came time to leave, they would go together.


End file.
